Hey all,
I was wondering which CTC videos and seminars focus on the downstroke escape technique?
I’ve got the Pickslanting Primer which is amazing but are there any others? I had a look through the store but couldn’t see any obvious ones.
Thanks in advance.
Chris
I think you would get a lot out of the Strunz & Farah interviews. They seem to default to that style of playing, although they each have their own unique ways of getting outside of it when needed
Andy Wood uses it a lot. He seems to be able to do everything though 
I prefer a DSX and found it quite useful to download some of the clips from his interviews as he said that he prefers a DSX motion. He does enter into most of his licks with a downstroke though and ends up on upstrokes.
I’d never heard of him before CTC and he is now one of my favourites. Check out Imagine Love on his Junktown album - amazing stuff.
EDIT: Herpa derp derp. While I suggest reading the stuff below, I completely blanked on the fact that there is a seminar devoted to players who primarily use DSX. It’s called “Antigravity”.
In terms of the actual mechanics of making the picking hand work for downstroke escape, as far as I can see, the Pickslanting Primer is the best resource.
As previous posters mentioned, the Strunz and Farah interview and any of the stuff with Andy Wood includes lots of DSX. Frank Gambale mixes DSX and USX, and there’s lots of good DSX in the Gambale stuff.
That said, once you understand how single-escape works with USX, you can apply the underlying principles to DSX.
As far as I’ve seen, the most systematic presentations of how to “make licks work” for single-escape picking in general are the “Volcano Seminar” (deconstructing Yngwie) and the “Cascase Seminar” (deconstructing Eric Johnson).
While those players and the presented material are USX, the same conceptual framework for integrating the left and right hand can also be applied to DSX. The over-arching theme is that while Eric and Yngwie don’t preach “systems”, they each “discovered” their way into fast licks that follow a single-escaped system. With an understanding of that single-escaped system, you can design an effective approach for single-escaped licks in general.
The main limitation that arises when trying to re-arrange “USX” licks to be playable as “DSX” is for licks that include sweeps, or “mini-sweeps” a.k.a. “directional picking” or “economy picking” (i.e. USX with consecutive downstrokes to change to the adjacent higher-pitched string, versus DSX with consecutive upstrokes to change to the adjacent lower-pitched string). You can always be like Gambale and learn to mix-and-match those approaches, changing your escape direction as needed, but it’s an important idea to grasp for understanding the limits of trying to translate USX repertoire to DSX (or vice versa). But in general, the limitation only arises in situations where a lick includes a single note on a string followed immediately by a string change: your choice of USX or DSX determines the direction your “trapped” pick can pick the adjacent string without hopping.
The surest way to identify if you’ve learned something is to explain it to someone else… Nice work man, damn.
Per my edit above, link to the Antigravity seminar:
Great stuff many thanks